Can 'Open Science' be Protected from the Evolving Scheme of IPR Protections?

Increasing access charges and transactions costs arising from monopoly rights in data and information adversely affect the conduct of science, especially exploratory research programs. The latter are critical for the sustained growth of knowledge-driven economies, and are most efficiently pursued in the 'open science' mode. In some fields, informal cooperative norms for timely sharing of access to raw data-steams and documented database resources are being undermined by legal institutional innovations that accommodate the further privatizing of the public domain in information. A variety of corrective measures are needed to restore proper balance to the IPR regime.